Testing post-by-mail. e.p.c. via earthlink

Testing post-by-mail. e.p.c. via earthlink

My weblog tool is still

My weblog tool is still hosed (though I can post to it through email). Went to our first NY Liberty game at the Garden today. I think the good seats are going to spoil us (especially when we come back for Knicks games up in the upper regions of the Garden). e.p.c. via earthlink

So the last couple of

So the last couple of days have been interesting. I'll update this post with more details in a few days. In the meantime expect new pictures on frisket.org.

Dinner tonight was rigatoni and gnocchi from Noodle Pudding, accompanied by a bottle of excellent wine from Judy & Bob.

Caught the NY Liberty vs

Caught the NY Liberty vs Detroit Shock WNBA game tonight. Well, ok, part of the game. By the half the Liberty were down by quite a bit and we were both tired so we headed home.

Leaving for the weekend in

Leaving for the weekend in Amagansett. Frisket will get to play with both Coco and a new friend Spike (the wonder dog). We will try to keep Frisket from eating Spike.

Arrived in Amagansett after slogging

Arrived in Amagansett after slogging through mild flooding on NY27. The soundtrack for the drive was Rufus Wainwright (have no idea which CD) and an R.E.M. collection ranging from Chronic Town through Monster. Hoping the weather clears, could use some sunshine this week.

Argh...Frisket woke up nice and

Argh...Frisket woke up nice and early (early for us...she slept the entire drive out) around 5:30. She's out playing now with Coco, getting thoroughly drenched.

Spent a relaxing day in

Spent a relaxing day in Amagansett. Frisket woke up around 6:30, took in her walk and breakfast and then dozed on the porch. Lunch was dosas from Hampton's chutney. For dinner we drove Cori, Josh, Pete & Rebecca to Planet Bliss on Shelter Island.

Another relaxing day in Amagansett.

Another relaxing day in Amagansett. Absolutely no plans for the day other than to drive back to Brooklyn this evening.

Arrived home around 10:00 pm...we

Arrived home around 10:00 pm...we got stuck in a traffic jam in Bridgehampton (apparently 27 was closed for one reason or another)...took close to four hours (almost as long as it took Pete & Rebecca to drive from Amagansett to Fishkill!).

So...the latest news can be

So...the latest news can be revealed. I resigned my position with netomat, inc. last week, effective the end of the month. It seemed to be the right thing to do for a variety of reasons, almost none of which I'll post here. I think the technology is sound, I just wasn't the person to get the product out the door. Lesson learned I guess.

So, the plan for now is to complete some transition work for netomat (we're parting amicably) and then to take July and August off. The plan for July is to drive Frisket and Lisa cross-country to Illinois where we'll spend a couple of weeks shuttling between the wilds of DuPage county and Urbana-Champaign. I have no plans post-trip. Somehow I don't think the Silicon Alley economy will promptly turn around again upon my return to NYC.

Testing the Radio 8.08 upgrade

Testing the Radio 8.08 upgrade to see how badly I hosed things.

Upgrading to Radio 8

Well...this is interesting.  Wonder if I can get the archives in sync with RU8.

Argh. I trashed my weblog.

Argh. I trashed my weblog. Well, not totally. I did two things tonight: first I migrated my epc.editthispage.com weblog into my current weblog (mainly merging in under 20 posts from 2001), then I upgraded to Radio 8.0x. So far the upgrade is ok with the slight exception of a completely different look for this site, which I just don't have time to debug tonight. So, for now...good night.

Working on fixing the post-upgrade

Working on fixing the post-upgrade template.

Still....

Upgraded!

Ok...I updated my weblog to use Radio Userland 8.0.  It seems to work ok (for now), apologies for the utter mess it left overnight.  One advantage of RU8 is that I can run multiple logs from one PC so later today I'll merge in Frisket's weblog (it will still have a separate site but update more frequently since it won't be on my slowly decaying iMac).

Rats...the archive links are not

Rats...the archive links are not working correctly.

I'll have to fix them tonight.

Sorry!

Another entry for the annals of dumb moves

Since we moved in, the DSL and lan equipment have been sitting in our bedroom.  This wasn't a problem in the winter since the added heat was welcome.  In the summer though...since I found myself with added free time (and need to be able to work from home more regularly) I thought Hey, why not reconfigure the LAN the way it's supposed to be?.

Doh

In moving the LAN and DSL equipment to the office I appear to have switched the power supplies for the router and modem.  The modem's real power supply no longer functions, and the modem itself appears to be brain dead (the power light comes on but nothing else activates).

 

Doh!

And 24 hours later we're back on the air.

I called Cloud9 and explained my boo-boo and they shipped a new ADSL modem overnight (of course, since I admitted up front that I'd fried it I got to pay for the new modem).

The only catch is that I think what got fried was the Linksys Wireless Router since it does not respond and I verified that I am plugging in the correct power supply. Luckily being the geeks we are, we had a backup older Linksys box I could use as a firewall.

Of course this means no WiFi in most of the house :-(

Radio Userland 8.0.8

Ok...so far I like the new Radio Userland 8.08 with two quibbles: it takes forever to load the weblog page (can't tell if it's my template or something else), and the HTML Radio spits out is technically malformed (it's all uppercase XMLish XHTML).

Working from home in the

Working from home in the morning (I'm doing transition work for netomat through the end of the month).

Ok...so the cocktail party last

Ok...so the cocktail party last night was a relative success...it rained all evening so we held it in the dining room, but otherwise got to see Rose, Eileen & Ross, David, and Misha.

Sunday Muggy Sunday

This was one of those weekends which don't really seem to start and you're surprised when it's finally over.  Frisket has been ill all weekend (more dietary indiscretions I assume) so we've stayed close to home.  I spent most of today taking care of Frisket and watching TV.

Keyspanned

Spent a frustrating day waiting for Keyspan to show up...see, we keep getting estimated readings from Keyspan since the meter reader only shows up when no one is home.  So...we arranged to get a remote reader installed... the catch being that we have an ancient gas meter which doesn't support remote readers, so the meter needs to be replaced as well.  A service guy came on Saturday, looked at the meter, and then announced that he didn't have the proper tools to do the install, could it be rescheduled for Monday?

Hence my waiting here all day.

The radioactive boy scout

This article was somewhat interesting, if disturbing (it dates from 1998, I found it via Slashdot).

Still trying to find out

Still trying to find out about the storm that passed through here an hour ago.  Lisa and I were watching TV in the den when we heard the wind kick up.  Then something (I'm guessing ball lightening) flashed inside the house by our skylight (where there's nothing electrical to speak of).  We shut down everything upstairs and consulted with Frisket (who was completely oblivious to the thunder and high winds).

Of course, it's completely clear now.

Argh...wiped out my homepage (what

Argh...wiped out my homepage (what little there was of it) when I uploaded my calendar.

Argh. Argh. Argh.

 

Ok..fixed the homepage. Site needs

Ok..fixed the homepage.

Site needs a redesign doesn't it?  Good thing I have some spare time now eh?

Eek...discovered why the page takes

Eek...discovered why the page takes forever to load...the "#" character at the bottom of each post is an image!  I'll fix that tomorrow.

Why Software Is So Bad

In the MIT Technology Review: For years we've tolerated buggy, bloated, badly organized computer programs. But soon, we'll innovate, litigate and regulate them into reliability...

Hmmm..."Radio Userland" seems stuck.

Hmmm..."Radio Userland" seems stuck.

Ok...removed the "#" images.

Ok...removed the "#" images.

Working for the day at

Working for the day at Netomat.  Am trying to figure out how to do things with MS PowerPoint which were trivial in Lotus Freelance.

Still having problems with "Radio

Still having problems with "Radio Userland" not publishing updates (though it says it is).

Zigolini's is alive and well

Walked around the old neighborhood (both work & home) this afternoon and ate lunch at Zigolini's.  For the ex-ibm.commers in the crowd, I had a #1 sandwich (turkey + russian dressing).

Want to Read This? Ask

Want to Read This? Ask First. So, National Public Radio wants to control who links to their pages, just as a Dallas newspaper tried earlier this year. What is this, the Iron Curtain Wide Web? Commentary by Jon Rochmis. [Wired News]

Playing with CSS

It appears that only MSIE supports rotating text (and then only if you mislabel the writing style in the CSS property). Anyone know if there's a generic CSS way to rotate text (ie vertically)?

How badly did I break

How badly did I break the weblog today?

Futbol

Gack...the US has no chance against Germany in the game...have been watching it on Univision. I don't think the ball has spent more than 30 seconds anywhere near the German goal.

I continue to fight off

I continue to fight off a combination of bronchitis and head cold. Apologies to Ross and Eileen for non-appearing yet again. Hope the move went well.

I continue to fight off

I continue to fight off a combination of bronchitis and head cold. Apologies to Ross and Eileen for non-appearing yet again. Hope the move went well.

Keyspan attempt #4 (or 5, or 6)

Sticking around home again today waiting for Keyspan to come and replace the gas meter. I've staked out our front stoop (sitting in the front bedroom with a great view of the house through the reflection from the windows across the street). Let's just see what excuse Keyspan uses this time.

Oh, and after a day

Oh, and after a day of feeling much better (so much so that I cooked a steak dinner last night on the deck), the plague returned with full force today.

Warchalking

From the Warchalking weblog: First stab. Okay so here is the first draft of a warchalking symbol card. Having not very much experience of war-walking or... [Warchalking]

Doh!: Ex-moths do not depict evolution

I'm catching up on my NYTimes reading and caught this article...I remember these photos allegedly depicting "fast" evolution from Sophomore year Biology. Since the article refers to it, here's a link to the ex-parrot sketch.

Keyspan attempt #4.5

Keyspan came.
Keyspan inspected the meter.
Keyspan determined that the meter is a "honking huge old ugly thing".
Keyspan determined that a suitable replacement was not in the Keyspan van.
Keyspan promised to return in an hour.
Keyspan left.

More updates as the occur throughout the day. Stay tuned for more As the meter turns.

Keyspan attempt #4.6

Keyspan is back...hopefully this won't take long.

Just to liven up things,

Just to liven up things, several manhole covers exploded off Clark St due to an apparent gas leak under the street.

So...there's a fire burning under

So...there's a fire burning under the street at the corner of Clark and Willow, and manhole covers have blown off on Clark, Willow, and Pineapple. The smell in the air is a nice acrid sulfuric smell, and it's getting worse.

Frisket came back from her

Frisket came back from her walk with Justine, totally oblivious to the goings on in the neighborhood. And, with the smoke clearing, I notice with no small touch of irony that there are now four Keyspan trucks on the street.

The fires appear to be

The fires appear to be out...FDNY left awhile ago, and Keyspan is clearing up. Still no word on the status of our meter change (other than that the meter is on the basement floor).

Think I'm going to pass

Think I'm going to pass on the NY Liberty game tonight.

So...today I went in to

So...today I went in to netomat for some closeout work. I planned only to be there a couple of hours, back by 4:00 or so. I left pretty much on time, and grabbed a downtown C train at 34th street around 4:15. We lurched out of the station and crept downtown. I mean crept. I mean, we were so slow that I suspect we were just coasting downtown. Eventually we rolled into 23rd street and stopped. People got off/got on...and the doors stayed open. The conductor came on and made a strangely understandable (and audible) announcement about signal problems at Canal Street...but we should be moving shortly.

I swear I dozed off and woke up 20 minutes later and we were still at 23rd street. Conductor comes back on and says that we'd be held at the station until 5:00 p.m. (it was about 4:30 at this point)...recommending that people in a rush to get to Brooklyn take an Uptown A/C to 59th street where they could take a Sixth avenue train to Brooklyn. By the time you do that transfer it'd be 5:00 already, so I stayed on the train. Almost as soon as everyone who was going to get off to do the uptown transfer got off, the doors closed and we started rolling down to 14th street, eventually slowing to a crawl again. We got to 14th around 4:55 with no sign that we were going to leave before 5:00, 6:00, etc.

So I think to myself...Hey Self, why not take the L to the 2/3 or the F? I need to learn to ignore these thoughts. I did take the L to Sixth avenue and transferred to an F, figuring that whatever was holding up the A/C was likely to affect the 1/2/3 as well. The F crept out of the station (notice a trend here) and slowly made its way to West 4th, and the rest of the Manhattan stops. By the time we got to York St Brooklyn I'd had enough (I was toying with going to Jay St and transferring to a Manhattan bound A/C for one stop). York St is not exactly close to our house in Brooklyn Heights (given that we're spoiled by having the 2/3 stop nearly across the street, and the A/C just a couple of short blocks away). I finally got home around 5:45 where I was promptly reprimanded by Frisket for staying away so long.

So...I'm thinking that this weblog

So...I'm thinking that this weblog software isn't worth the trouble. See, Midday Tuesday when all sorts of neat events were occuring (it's not often that the street next door blows up so to speak), the software I use to write this weblog crashed and burned yet again. I'd start it up, and it'd hum along and stop everything else from running, but wouldn't post to the site (in fact it appears to have trashed the site...again).

And now?

Hmmm...trying to get RU to publish to the radio.weblogs.com site.

Death of the Internet predicted

I find this decision by ICANN really disturbing. They've done a lousy job so far and this will only serve to limit their accountability further: (update) ICANN approves reform blueprint. Board of directors unanimously votes to reorganize [InfoWorld: Top News]

Heh heh heh....the tivo is

Heh heh heh....the tivo is now on the home network, disconnected from the phone line. With the tivo 3.0 software, the ethernet card I added when I did the upgrade in May became automatically configured. The tivo will now use our DSL line for updates instead of the phone line.

Sniff...my 3 year old iMac

Sniff...my 3 year old iMac appears to have died. Won't power up, no sparks, nada.